jerry thornton

A Draft Day plea for Beli-Claus

How are you? I hope you are well. I know the big day is upon us and you and your helpers are working hard at your war room in Foxboro, busily getting everything ready for all of us. So I won’t keep you. I’m just writing to tell you what I’ve wished for this year.

But first, I want you to know I’ve been extra special good this year. Some of my friends have been saying they don’t believe in you anymore. Or they say you never really made any Draft Day miracles happen. That there was nothing supernatural about getting Tom Brady in the sixth round or Asante Samuel in the fourth or trading Drew Bledsoe for Ty Warren or having Vince Wilfork drop all the way to No. 22. They say that those were all just lucky accidents. Or that it was really just Scott Pioli who gave us those guys, not you. But I stayed loyal.

I’ve never lost faith in you, Beli-Claus. To me, there’s only one jolly fat man who makes wishes come true on Draft Day, and he doesn’t coach the Jets. If you can allow me to mix my gift-giving holiday figure metaphors for a moment, this Thursday I’ll be sitting in my pumpkin patch waiting for you to arrive and give out the presents because mine is the sincerest one around. Because I know you worked your magic before and you can do it again. And I don’t need any Francis Pharcellus Church in the New York Sun writing to tell me “Yes, Jerry, There is a Beli-Claus” because I believe in you.

And this Draft Day, that’s more important than ever. Because things are really bad around here, Jolly Old St. Bill. Times are bad. People are struggling and they need something to have faith in. It’s early yet, but the “Run Prevention Sox” are looking more and more like the “Bridge to the Casey Kelly Era” team we all feared they’d be. The team Theo Epstein tried to tell us they’d be, until he looked into our innocent, trusting eyes and couldn’t bring himself to come out and say it. The Celtics and Bruins? Sure the playoffs are off to a good start for both. But if you can allow me one more holiday metaphor, both teams might give us a pleasant surprise this spring, but none of us expects the fun to last longer than the expiration date on the Cadbury Crème Eggs in our baskets.

But you? You can offer us something permanent. Something the fans of this region have in short supply and need right now more than ever. With this draft you can give us the gift of Hope.

And I mean real, honest-to-God Hope. You’re going into Draft night with four of the top 53 picks and 12 overall. With the chance to move up and down the board to your heart’s content and get real difference-makers on this team. I’m talking about the kind of impact players that will create widespread panic in the streets of Indy, Miami and New York. I’m talking about guys with off-the-charts measurables and chips on their shoulders the size of the Bass Pro Shop who want to eat, sleep and breathe Patriots football. Hardass football lifers and feral maniacs who’ll cause an outbreak of incontinence in your rivals’ war rooms and an epidemic of priapism Cape Cod to Lake Champlain. The kinds of guys you built a dynasty on. The Bruschis, Seymours, Harrisons and Troy Browns of the Twitter Age.

And that might mean a slight change in your philosophy, if I might be so bold. Look, I love the whole “value” thing more than anybody. Well, in truth I don’t love it; but I go along with it because it’s your core belief and like I said, I believe in you. But no one actually looks forward to this business of trading down from a high pick to get a handful of lesser picks. I mean, we live in an instant payout kind of world. You don’t play a slot machine hoping to win an annuity that will pay you out over time starting a couple of years from now. We want instant results. No angry mob ever took to the streets yelling “We want delayed gratification! When do we want it?! NOW!!!”

And the last several years that’s how you’ve operated on Draft Day. While teams like the loathsome Jets have been packaging up picks to move up into the first round and grab high profile, splashy, glamour guys like Darrelle Revis and Mark Sanchez, you’ve consistently been moving back and loading up on safer, conservative middle-round picks. The equivalent of trading high tech stocks for municipal bonds. Even the year you did grab an immediate impact player in Jerod Mayo, you moved back from the seventh choice to tenth, and it would take a draft archaeologist to comb through the archives and figure out whatever happened to the extra picks you got for that move.

And I’m not about to suggest the conservative approach is always a bad thing. Last year, for example, you traded your first rounder that in a series of moves ended up becoming Darius Butler, Brandon Tate and Julian Edelman, all of whom we’ve got high hopes for in the near future. But none of them helped make a difference in 2009 and your team had, all things considered, probably your worst year since that blessed day you came to Foxboro.

So that’s what we’re looking for this year. Immediate gratification. I want to be blown away this weekend when I wake up and see what Beli-Claus brought me. No more safe picks. I want you to work your special brand of alchemy, spinning straw into gold like you did in ’02 and ’03, drafting six starters on Super Bowl champions. I want what Simon Cowell calls “The Wow Factor.” With the exception of Mayo, for the last couple of drafts you’ve left us with practical, sensible gifts. The draft equivalent of a warm coat or a Savings Bond or a nice pair of socks. Well, enough of that. Spoil us rotten for once. We want something ostentatious and impractical and downright dangerous that might shoot our eyes out. Anything, provided it works and it drives the other kids in the league out of their minds with jealousy, the way they used to be six or seven years ago.

In other words, give us Hope. Like Andy Dufresne said, hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And the Boston fan is desperate for some right now.

So be bold, just this once. Forget value. Forget playing it safe. Overspend. Trade picks, move up in the draft, do whatever it takes. But just dazzle us all with your Draft Day brilliance like you used to so I can shut up the doubters, the haters and the unbelievers. After all, it only comes once a year. Merry Draft Day.

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